"Crisis Management Center" moved to Brisbane!

As most of you already know, we have been going through a bit of a drama over our visas for Papua New Guinea (PNG). We applied for them several months ago at the PNG High Commision in London. Although we learned indirectly of their approval before our planned July 23 flight out of Switzerland, for unknown reasons the immigration office in Port Moresby (the capital) was not able to fax these approvals to London. As a result we fell into a legally complicated situation in Switzerland; and it became increasingly difficult for Benson and Noah, whose school year on the mission center (Ukarumpa) already began on July 23.

Last Thursday, with advice from the Wycliffe/SIL office in PNG, we decided to transfer our visa applications from London to Brisbane, Australia. There is a PNG consulate in Brisbane. We immediately started following up on this decision, which gave us another exciting time of waiting --this time for our passports and application materials to be mailed back to us! And...

A week later our passports arrived back in the mail safe and sound!! In the meantime we cancelled our first flight and booked a new one for Saturday, August 16. I also let the Winterthur "Inhabitant Control" office know that on this date we would "definitely leave" Switzerland :). This waiting time brought a lot of good with it, especially a longer transition period for Johanna, Ben, and Noah, whose school year had finished only on July 11. Michael and Thomas were also able to set up their apartment better. And during this time Johannas father suffered a slight heart attack, which led to Johanna spending a nice couple of days with her parents. Above is a photo of our goodbye visit with them, which we had already made on July 20.

At the end of this waiting time in Switzerland we were quite positive about this no-man's land, even if along the way some anxiety and frustration had been mixed in!

For 25 day I was sending an almost daily "Visa crisis" update by email. Now we really are in Brisbane, living out of suitcases, so even our email friends will have to do with less frequent updates. But you can always have a look here in our blog for the latest.